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A university president makes a case against cowardice

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451 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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carbocation ◴[03 Apr 25 13:17 UTC] No.43569175[source]▶
So far the fight/not fight decisions can be predicted in advanced based on whether an institution has a medical center with NIH grants.
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drooby ◴[03 Apr 25 13:49 UTC] No.43569620[source]▶
He states in the interview that Wesleyan has NIH grants. They are preparing to let scientists go if it comes to it.
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carbocation ◴[03 Apr 25 13:56 UTC] No.43569745[source]▶
Wesleyan does not have a medical center and according to the NIH’s public reporting, they have under $2 million in NIH grants, compared to $600 million for Columbia. (Edited from $400 million, which is the value cut.)

Wesleyan has a $250 million operating budget, so the (from what REPORTER indicates) $1.6 million in NIH funding represents 0.6% of their budget. In contrast, the $600 million in NIH funding to Columbia represents about 10% of its $6 billion operating budget.

So both in terms of absolute numbers and relative numbers, the NIH contributions to Wesleyan are de minimis.

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insane_dreamer ◴[03 Apr 25 19:15 UTC] No.43574081[source]▶
That makes a strong case for academic institutions not being substantially dependent on government research dollars.
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dcrazy ◴[03 Apr 25 20:54 UTC] No.43575264[source]▶
No it doesn’t. The First amendment is supposed to prevent the government from conditionalizing access to government services based on the speech of the recipient. Private institutions are not subject to such restrictions. If we want to encourage academic freedom, we want to find this behavior by the government to be illegal.
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nickff ◴[03 Apr 25 22:09 UTC] No.43576070[source]▶
If you're going to resort to Constitutional arguments, you shouldn't gloss over the fact that the federal government is supposed to be one of enumerated powers, and there's no 'bribing universities to do what you want' federal power.
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geonineties ◴[04 Apr 25 04:44 UTC] No.43578401[source]▶
Unfortunately, that's not true. Article 1 gives congress very broad budgetary powers. Basically congress can spend money how they want, including bribing universities.
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1. nickff ◴[04 Apr 25 17:40 UTC] No.43585578[source]▶
It depends on your understanding of Article 1 Section 8:

>"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

What does "general Welfare" mean in this context? Are those words just meaningless filler, or should they be interpreted to indicate that the spending must be in furtherance of another specifically enumerated power? I believe the latter (Madisonian take), but this is a contentious subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause#Gen...